Opening a glaze fired kiln is like opening presents on Christmas morning. You are never sure what you are going to get and hope it’s all magnificent. I had some bitter disappointments in my last glaze firing.
Have been working on redesigning my “pillow” wall plates to be all ceramic. Previously I was using a block of wood to support the ceramic structure with tile cement. Unfortunately the wood could separate, causing the piece to fall to the ground.
A while back I took a paper-clay workshop with the express purpose of seeing if I could make the entire frame of the wall plates out of porcelain. I discovered I could; however, it would be a good amount of time before I could get into my studio and “practice” what I had learned. Early on, I had failures before the pieces were even fired. So, I worked on redesigning the structures.
Finally I was able to move 4 pieces successfully through the first firing with no cracking. I glazed them and got ready to re-fire again. I had 3 “failures” and 1 that turned out perfect.
I could not upload the videos here, so I have the links below to check them out.
Collapsed Dots – https://youtu.be/QPaOXlOcfvA
Cracked Quilt – https://youtu.be/Qs9t1OmKe-Y
No Color Contrast – https://youtu.be/2MlttRgwRas
Perfect Wall Plate – https://youtu.be/DDRUIqeypTI
I will try to do some other technique on the 3 that were not perfect from this firing.
